So what is it like to publish?
Over on the Books of the Dead Press blog is a long post from James Roy Daley about what it's like to be a publisher. I've never dealt with the problems of having other peoples' work on my shoulders, but running a self-published imprint I can tell you, all the rest of this also applies to self-published authors as much as it does to anyone trying to do this as a business with a stable of writers. Give it a read, because it really does explain succinctly why publishing can be stressful for everyone involved. Yeah, it's no fun for us writers, but it's no walk through a garden of money trees for small press publishers either.
What I like is how the path of publishing followed includes everything, right up to "you had a brain fart and said something stupid." I can so relate to that! Although I think at this point, I've just fallen into a rut of one long brain fart, and I stopped caring about damage control. Anywho, also good was "5 more terrible reviews came down the pipe and two of them are from people that haven't read the book; the urge to respond is overwhelming." Yar, it's even more problematic when reading reviews that make me go, "What fucking book were you reading? It sure as hell wasn't mine!"
And don't even get me started on the section on formatting problems, little digital hiccups that take a happy file and turn it into a potential ebook PR nightmare so awful, you do overtime to reformat the whole book overnight and upload it again. And then there's, "Oh, sure, all the ebooks look fine, EXCEPT for the Kindle file." Sure, only the most active book market, where your book is looking so butt ugly, even you, its figurative mother, will not love it. So that's a do-over too. Unless you choose to work with KDP directly, which comes with its own little list of headaches and potential gotchas. And then there's the "joy" of opening your latest print novel and finding a typo on page one despite you going through three proof copies "to be sure." SOB!
So, yes, I can totally, completely relate to the sentiments expressed in the post. While it is long, I think it is totally worth your time, as it gets "better" as it goes along. So if you're wanting something interesting to read while waiting for my next flop to drop, try reading what a publisher has to go through to earn "easy money." It very clearly illustrates the maxim "If the grass seems greener elsewhere, that's because the grass is growing where the septic tank is buried."
